Antiquities Exhibits

Mark Cartwright of the Ancient History Encyclopedia just published and excellent article on the Gundestrup Cauldron and I wish to share it with you.  But first some of my personal musings about the object. The Gundestrup Cauldron, dated to the 1st century BCE, was discovered by workers cutting peat blocks in a bog near Gundestrup, North Jutland, Denmark on 28 May 1891 CE. The details of the decorative reliefs on the cauldron show a clear Celtic influence but some motifs, particularly the exotic animals (lions or leopards, elephants, and griffins), suggest, too, a Near Eastern influence so that scholars generally attribute its manufacture to peoples living in the Lower Danube region, specifically Dacia or Thrace (which is today’s Romania and Bulgaria). The use of silver is another link with the Lower Danube region as it is rare in Celtic art but not so in Thracian art.  When I first encountered Nuragic art from Sardinia, I wondered if those people may have had an influence on t...

These gold plaques depicting a winged goddess flanked by lions were created on the island of Rhodes during the so-called "orientalizing period."  This reference in art history is used to describe a development in western art beginning in the latter part of the 8th century BCE when there was a heavy influence from the art of the eastern Mediterranean including Assyria, Phoenicia, and Egypt.  During this time Greek motifs began to shift from geometric designs to the depiction of deities, animals, and mythological creatures.  Two schools of thought exist regarding the question of whether or not Geometric art itself was indebted to eastern models. In Attic pottery, the distinctive Orientalizing style known as "proto-Attic" was marked by floral and animal motifs. It was the first time discernibly Greek religious and mythological themes were represented in vase painting. The bodies of men and animals were depicted in silhouette, though their heads were drawn in outline. W...

Nuragic bronze figurines at the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. Back in June of this year I posted about the collection of Nuragic Art at the national Archaeological Museum of Cagliari on Sardinia. Nuragic civilization lasted on the island of Sardinia from the 18th century BCE to 238 BCE when the Romans colonized the island. The term "Nuragic" is derived from the island's most characteristic monument, the nura ghe, a tower-fortress type of construction the ancient Sardinians built in large numbers. Even today more than 7,000 nuraghes dot the Sardinian landscape. If you can't make a trip to Sardinia, though, you can still see several excellent examples of Nuragic bronze figurines at the Art Institute of Chicago. These warrior people have been associated with the Sherden tribe of the late Bronze Age Sea Peoples. Simonides of Ceos and Plutarch spoke of raids by Sardinians against the island of Crete, in the same period in which the Sea People invaded E...

Nuragic art at the National Archaeological Museum of Cagliari, Sardinia. This museum houses findings from the pre-Nuragic and Nuragic age through the Byzantine age. These include a large collection of prehistoric bronze statuettes from the Nuragic age, some earlier stone statuettes of female divinities, reconstruction of a Phoenician settlement, the Nora Stone, Carthaginian goldsmith examples, Roman and Italic ceramics and Byzanti ne jewels. Nuragic civilization lasted on the island of Sardinia from the 18th century BCE to 238 BCE when the Romans colonized the island. The term "Nuragic" is derived from the island's most characteristic monument, the nuraghe, a tower-fortress type of construction the ancient Sardinians built in large numbers. Even today more than 7,000 nuraghes dot the Sardinian landscape. These warrior people have been associated with the Sherden tribe of the late Bronze Age Sea Peoples. Simonides of Ceos and Plutarch spoke of raids by Sardinians ag...